Recent reviews by modchipped

I gave up on FPS as a genre quite a long ago, after both seeing what happens there on average and especially after playing some titles that everyone praised as "nah this one's really good bro, not like the others" but that were, in fact, also generic as hell — like Titanfall 2.

Well, this one is actually good.

At first I was prone to avoid the new Doom games because of their seemingly useless and casual glory-kills, but when you turn something from a mere cheap spectacle to a vital game mechanic, magical things start to happen. Unlike the regular formula of shooting the bad guys and picking up ammo in-between, this game limits your max ammo in a way that you're encouraged to not only use different weapons (which adds variability), but also watch the ammo count and replenish it mid-battle by chainsawing the enemies, as well as heal yourself by finishing off the enemies with your hands (both of which pushes you out of the comfort zone and adds the so, so needed tactical aspect of a certain kind).

A lot of midwits criticized the game because of this, because they can't just circle around the arena and shoot endlessly at the enemies anymore, but who in their right mind would still want that same old mindless shootfest? Don't get me wrong, I love the old Doom games, but they are still always there to play if you want to scratch that itch, and adding a layer of modern graphics on top of it isn't gonna improve it in any way that matters.

Developing a new game is always a chance to introduce new things to the formula — a chance to do things differently — a chance that is usually not allowed to be taken in the current sorry state of the game industry, in which any new ideas are branded as "too risky", "too unprofitable", "too unconventional". For the first time in ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ decades the stars have aligned and the higher-ups at ID / Bethesda allowed the developers to make something new, fresh and actually fun, and you bitсh about it because you act like the FPS genre has already been perfected whereas, in reality, there's still so much new additions and mechanics to play around with? Go ♥♥♥♥ yourself.

Anyway. The game is not without its faults. The final boss is garbage and the progression of skills / upgrades hits a wall a bit too early (I maxed almost everything out at like 60% of the game), but it doesn't matter. That's not what the game's about. It's about the good old demon killing, but now in a more stylish and diverse way than before, and the game succeeds at what it wants to be.

I'd even go as far as recommending this game not just to fans of the FPS genre in particular, but to anyone who appreciates and enjoys good game design and action games in general. Not buying this at a discount would be a foolish thing to do.

While it doesn't have the full depth of either genre it combines, the devs compensated for it with competence and high quality in, well, pretty much every aspect of the game. There was not a single moment where I thought "uuh this is some bull­s­h­і­t" and had a lot of moments like "yeah this is nice and makes sense" instead.
This might sound a bit disappointing to people who were only interested in this for the roguelike part OR metroidvania part, but that's not the game's downside at all - it wasn't made for them.
As for the Early Access stuff: at the moment of writing the game is close to launch and I don't think I've encountered a single bug, and the game's balance seems to have been tweaked enough times for me to not have any complaints about it.

Another thing - after about 10 hours I've mostly lost interest in the game, despite there still being plenty of items left to discover. This might be due to me "peaking" in the game quite early / sooner than intended (in terms of level progression) coupled with ADHD, though, so it's not an objective indicator in any way. Again, not a bad thing: I'd rather have 10 hours of interesting and concentrated runs than the same amount of fun stretched over a 100.

A hard, fair, and well-balanced arcade runner / platformer with some of the most brilliant level design I've ever seen. RGJG shows the creative limits of what a developer could do, level design-wise, in a simple game with just two buttons.

The part of the game that makes you appreciate the level design even more is the collectables, though. Technically, you can complete each level just by getting from start to finish, but if you're anything like me, that half-аssеd playstyle will just leave you feeling unsatisfied. Instead, the game places a lot of collectables in the furthest, trickiest places possible, always making you take the difficult path, daring you to play the game in what is basically the hardest (but also most interesting) way possible. Good stuff.
I'm not usually the collectionist type, but in this game it feels like the intended way to play.

On top of that, the game constantly adds additional challenge by regularly pushing you out of your comfort zone with new mechanics and creative use of the aforementioned level design. One of the main reasons you keep playing the game is just to see what will the next level look like, as the content this game throws at you always feels fresh and never repetitive.

Even though it's a game in a rather niche genre, RGJG still deserves a lot more love and recognition than it currently gets: I know for a fact there's tons of players who are up for the kind of challenges this game offers.